The Mother of the Modern-Day

Civil Rights Movement

ROSA
PARKS
Efforts by :
Submitted to :
Harleen Kaur
Mrs. Navjot Deol BJMC {SEM.ll}
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks
(1913 – 2005) was an African
American civil right’s activist
and seamstress whom the U.S.
Congress dubbed the “Mother
of the Modern-Day Civil
Rights Movement”.
 Early life & Family
Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee,
Alabama. Her parents, James and Leona McCauley, separated when Parks
was two. Parks’ mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama, to live
with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards. Both of Parks'
grandparents were formerly enslaved people and strong advocates for
racial equality; the family lived on the Edwards' farm, where Parks would
spend her youth.
 
Parks' childhood brought her early experiences with racial discrimination
and activism for racial equality. In one experience, Parks' grandfather
stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members
marched down the street. 
 Education
Throughout Parks' education, she attended segregated schools. Taught to read by her
mother at a young age, Parks attended a segregated, one-room school in Pine Level,
Alabama, that often lacked adequate school supplies such as desks. African
American students were forced to walk to the first through sixth-grade schoolhouse,
while the city of Pine Level provided bus transportation as well as a new school
building for white students. 
Beginning at age 11, Parks attended the city's Industrial School for Girls
in Montgomery. In 1929, while in the 11th grade and attending a laboratory school
for secondary education led by the Alabama State Teachers College for
Negroes, Parks left school to attend to both her sick grandmother and mother back
in Pine Level. Parks didn't return to her studies. Instead, she got a job at a shirt
factory in Montgomery.
 Marriage
After marrying in 1932, she earned her high school degree in 1933
with her husband's support.
In 1932, at age 19, Parks met and married Raymond Parks, a barber
and an active member of the NAACP. 
After graduating high school with Raymond's support, Parks became
actively involved in civil rights issues by joining the Montgomery
chapter of the NAACP in 1943, serving as the chapter's youth leader
as well as secretary to NAACP President E.D. Nixon — a post she
held until 1957. The couple never had children .
 Arrest
On December 1, 1955, Parks was arrested for refusing a bus driver's instructions
to give up her seat to a white passenger. She later recalled that her refusal wasn't
because she was physically tired, but that she was tired of giving in.
After a long day's work at a Montgomery department store, where she worked as a
seamstress, Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus for home. She took a seat in
the first of several rows designated for "colored" passengers. 
The Montgomery City Code required that all public transportation be segregated
and that bus drivers had the "powers of a police officer of the city while in actual
charge of any bus for the purposes of carrying out the provisions" of the
code. While operating a bus, drivers were required to provide separate but equal
accommodations for white and Black passengers by assigning seats. 
This was accomplished with a line roughly in the middle of the bus separating white
passengers in the front of the bus and African American passengers in the back. When an
African American passenger boarded the bus, they had to get on at the front to pay their
fare and then get off and re-board the bus at the back door.
As the bus Parks was riding continued on its route, it began to fill with white passengers.
Eventually, the bus was full and the driver noticed that several white passengers were
standing in the aisle. The bus driver stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two
sections back one row, asking four Black passengers to give up their seats. 
The city's bus ordinance didn't specifically give drivers the authority to demand a passenger
to give up a seat to anyone, regardless of color. However, Montgomery bus drivers had
adopted the custom of moving back the sign separating Black and white passengers and, if
necessary, asking Black passengers to give up their seats to white passengers. If the Black
passenger protested, the bus driver had the authority to refuse service and could call the
police to have them removed.
Three of the other Black passengers on the bus complied with the driver, but Parks refused
and remained seated.
The driver demanded, "Why don't you stand up?" to which Parks replied, "I don't think
I should have to stand up." The driver called the police and had her arrested. 
The police arrested Parks at the scene and charged her with violation of Chapter 6,
Section 11, of the Montgomery City Code. She was taken to police headquarters,
where, later that night, she was released on bail.
 Life after Bus Boycott
Although she had become a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement, Parks suffered
hardship in the months following her arrest in Montgomery and the subsequent boycott.
She lost her department store job and her husband was fired after his boss forbade him to
talk about his wife or their legal case. 
Unable to find work, they eventually left Montgomery and moved to Detroit, Michigan
along with Parks' mother. There, Parks made a new life for herself, working as a secretary
and receptionist in U.S. Representative John Conyer's congressional office. She also
served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
In 1987, with longtime friend Elaine Eason Steele, Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond
Parks Institute for Self-Development. The organization runs "Pathways to Freedom" bus
tours, introducing young people to important civil rights and Underground Railroad sites
throughout the country.
In 1992, Parks published Rosa Parks: My Story, an autobiography recounting her
life in the segregated South. In 1995, she published Quiet Strength, which
includes her memoirs and focuses on the role that religious faith played
throughout her life.
Death
On October 24, 2005, Parks quietly died in her apartment in Detroit, Michigan at
the age of 92. She had been diagnosed the previous year with progressive
dementia, which she had been suffering from since at least 2002. 
Parks' death was marked by several memorial services, among them, lying in
honor at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., where an estimated 50,000
people viewed her casket. She was interred between her husband and mother at
Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery, in the chapel's mausoleum. Shortly after her death,
the chapel was renamed the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel.